The Theater Department at Thunder Mountain High School is unveiling a new play tomorrow, it's a musical based on the classic story "The Secret Garden" We spoke with Dawn Kolden, Theater Educator at Thunder Mountain High School, who filled in a few details;

"It's a very sweet story, it's about a little girl who comes to live in a house that's sort of depressed and down because there's a young boy who is invalid and she sort of helps bring him back to life through the magic of a garden and people that love her. One thing I think we're really trying to work here is a comprehensive study of theater so when the actors are not on stage they actually are allowed to go back in the scene shop with our technical director and build the set and paint the set, and we also have the musicians who come to all the rehearsals and listen to the music, and to the show I mean, and then we also have two students who are going downstairs and drumming during the show and then coming back up and also being characters."

So the students are getting a lot more out of the experience than just a chance to play a role. Andrew Raney, who plays one of the lead characters "Colin the Invalid", gave us his perspective.

"I've been into theater for a few years now; I tried out for this play, I thought it would be fun and I'm really happy with the part I got, it's challenged me a lot as an actor, and I've got to know a lot of great people here and we've all helped each other grow through this production."

Kolden then related how much work goes into putting the show together; "Well I'm going to say over thirty students are involved, we've been working on it for about two months, but actually we start last year when I picked the play based on who the students are, who our costume designer, our set designer is, and our musicians are. The dates are the 18th and 19th at 7:30pm at Thunder Mountain Theater and also the 25th and 26th at 7:30pm and opening night is fun because we've started a tradition of a talkback with the actors, so after opening night the audience can stay and they can ask any questions they want to the actors the musicians and the technicians."

"The Secret Garden"; Go and see it, It'll grow on you.

Directing all the students has its own rewards, and Kolden told us; "I'm touched in a good way by the students, the performance is very heartwarming."